Examples of Copyright Violation

by Louis Kroeck, Demand Media

Not all copyright violations are related to privacy.

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There are many different ways to violate copyright law. The most common copyright violation is copyright infringement. However, due to the several different rights reserved to copyright holders, it is possible to violate copyright law without engaging in copyright infringement or copyright piracy. Before you can understand copyright violations you must consider the many rights reserved for copyright holders. As a small business owner, it is important to understand copyright violations in order to safeguard your intellectual property.

Rights of Copyright Holders

In order to obtain a copyright it is not necessary to register a work with the U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright protection is technically granted as soon as an original work of authorship is fixed in a tangible medium. Copyright holders have the exclusive right to make copies of a work, to distribute the work, to perform or display the work publicly and the right to make derivative works based on the original work. If your small business owns copyrighted material, you'll need to monitor this material to make sure that it is not being misused by someone else.

Piracy

The most common way that copyright laws are violated is through piracy. Some examples of piracy include: making unlicensed of DVDs and selling them to the public, printing and selling copies of a book without permission, distributing copyrighted music on the Internet and breaking digital protections on software in order to use the software without paying the license fee.

Other Rights

Because copyright holders have rights that are not related to making copies of their work, there are other ways to violate copyright law. It would be a violation of copyright law to make a sequel to a movie based on the characters and content in the original movie. Additionally, it would be a violation of copyright law to hold a screening of a movie for the general public without the permission of the copyright holder.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act establishes a variety of other actions that can constitute copyright violations. For example, the Act makes it unlawful to circumvent digital protections in order to access copyrighted material. So developing a method to circumvent regional DVD protections in order to distribute the copyrighted work could constitute a copyright violation that is separate from the copyright violation associated with distributing the work.

About the Author

Louis Kroeck started writing professionally under the direction of Andrew Samtoy from the "Cleveland Sandwich Board" in 2006. Kroeck is an attorney out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania specializing in civil litigation, intellectual property law and entertainment law. He has a B.S from the Pennsylvania State University in information science technology and a J.D. from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

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